BehavioralNENir Eyal 2-min read 10-min action

The 10-Minute Rule

Sit with the urge to escape for ten minutes before you act on it.

The concept

Internal triggers & discomfort management

Perfectionism isn't a defect in your taste — it's an uncomfortable feeling you're trying to escape. The urge to bail on a draft is your brain searching for relief.

Try it now

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Sourced from

Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life

Part 2: Master Internal Triggers

By Nir EyalView source

Get reminded to actually run this

Pivots only work when you use them. Send me a gentle nudge:

Pivot pairs

Curated cross-disciplinary pairings that strengthen this one.

The Anxiety Pair

Pair with: The Insight-to-Action Split

Eyal gives you the behavioral constraint to stay at the desk. Gottlieb tells you what the discomfort is actually about.

How people ran this

Used this before a portfolio review. Sat with the dread for 8 minutes, then opened Figma and just shipped the worst version. Got the best feedback of my year.

Maya, product designer

Ran it during a planning week when I kept rewriting the same doc. Three rough versions in 15 minutes — my staff eng picked the one I least liked.

Jordan, eng manager

I'm a chronic deleter. The 'name the feeling' step was the unlock. It was almost always shame, not perfectionism.

Anon

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